Bonner Heads for Home at End of Her U.S. Stay

Soviet dissident Yelena Bonner said a reluctant and fearful goodby to her family Saturday and headed back to the Soviet Union to resume life in exile with her husband, physicist Andrei D. Sakharov.

“I am afraid of the unprecedented isolation in which we have lived during the past two years,” Bonner said before leaving Logan International Airport aboard a TWA flight to Paris with her daughter, Tatiana Yankelevich, who translated her mother’s native Russian.

“I fear life under the constant supervision of the lens of a hidden camera being used to film me. Even more than this, I am afraid that in the West, information will be disseminated against us,” Bonner said. She and her husband have been forced to live in the closed city of Gorky because of their dissident activities.

Appearing far healthier than the frail woman who arrived in Boston last December seeking medical treatment, Bonner said:

“I feel great sadness parting with my children and especially with my grandchildren. I am returning to my husband. I want to return to him but it is extremely sad and extremely difficult to return.”

Bonner’s son-in-law, Efrem Yankelevich, said, “If it were not for her husband, she would probably not go back. Her life there is really not one that many people would like to return to.”

Bonner, who underwent heart surgery during her six-month stay with relatives in suburban Newton, expects to meet French President Francois Mitterrand and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher before flying to Moscow June 2, the day her exit visa expires.

Following a hunger strike by Sakharov, Bonner, 62, was allowed to leave the Soviet Union last December to seek medical treatment in the United States.

The Soviet government extended her exit visa while she recuperated from surgery.